Seasonal Rugby Barbarians

Somewhat surprisingly perhaps I actually love the idea. I don't really have that much of a problem with "rest of" sides per se; my problem is teams being called "rest of ___" as I think it's completely tacky and devalues what you're representing. If you can find a suitable name that has some actual real-life meaning - like Nullabor for the SA/WA side, or the Barbarians for this side - then it's fine.

Definitely helps us get over the fact that Britain are over-powered in SR compared to CS, especially if you made them the British Isles and added the plastic paddies as will happen in CS for some competitions next season. Asia can still select their shunty side in the Australian sub-provincial comp and keep their identity that way, while actually having a pathway for their decent players to play in a top provincial comp.

 

I'd also like to propose that you let provincial sides pick blokes who don't have club contracts, just to make sure they don't end up stretched too short. Could you cap their skill or something or would it be too difficult? I could probably even have it listed on the page you copy/paste the post rankings from whether or not they have a club side, based on the usergroups.

 

All the non-NSW sides in that comp are shunty.

 

What if I capped them for you? I could make the postcounts only count for 50% for uncontracted players or something, on the rankings list.

I just think things like this:

Make it messy. It's just too subjective and unrealistic to only have players available in exceptional circumstances; I think they should be either available or unavailable. And always unavailable stretches some of these sides a bit thin, especially since we could well actually have a reduced player pool for next season.

 

Yeah I was thinking about it as a next season idea; it'd be weird to change it mid-season.

 

Yeah, that was my point basically. I'm fearful of a reduced player pool.

The Provincial Championship is its own competition and it hasn't started yet so it could theoretically have its own rules, but it's sub-provincial stuff where you might actually need uncontracted players and that's already started. I can't imagine any of the big three or even the Barbarians needing to even wanting to pick a massively capped uncontracted player, especially if they haven't posted this season. CappedCG might be looking at an England bench spot if he was available I guess?

 

Speaking from experience, it really lifted a huge weight off my shoulders to make everyone available for provincial cricket in CricSim, especially when it came to the PCDIY stuff. Selectors regularly got it wrong as to when they were allowed to pick uncontracted players in PCDIY, it was really confusing and inconsistent. I struggled to keep it in any way realistic. Open slather is working much better and aside from Borisc who was a really weird case anyway, I don't think we've actually seen an uncontracted player appear in the PC since the rule change.

It's a bit different with SR because there aren't massive punishments for not coming onto the forum for an entire season, but if you had Golding filling out a spot in rep rugby for a while and it made it more challenging to break into the side right away then I don't think it'd necessarily be a bad thing.

 

Yeah our side would be so much better if some of our five gun props were back rowers. Would also help if a couple of our wingers were centres.